Our heart is with Annunciation.

It went up after the school shooting at Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis on August 27, 2025. Today marks one year since. They are calling it a Day of Remembrance.

I’ve been thinking about what it means to remember.

My brother’s family belongs to this school and church community. His children — “our” babies — were baptized there. It is where my husband and I first became godparents. We have attended countless school celebrations and milestones there, gathered in the church basement with parents and friends for trivia nights and fundraisers and all the ordinary things through which a place becomes woven into a family’s life. A place holding memories that existed long before August 27, 2025, and that now holds this, too.

And still, what happened that morning did not happen directly to me.

In the days afterward, I struggled with what was mine to say. There were people so much closer to the center of what had happened, carrying losses and experiences that were theirs to tell. Mostly I shared their words and otherwise stayed quiet.

This is a tension many of us encounter when someone we love is grieving.

What belongs to them? What belongs to us? Are we allowed to be this sad when it didn’t happen to us? Is reaching out helpful, or are we intruding? Should we say something? Should we stay quiet?

Yet not being at the center of a loss does not mean we stand outside it. Not centering ourselves in another person’s grief is different from erasing ourselves from it.

I’ve also been thinking of sistering, a construction practice in which one structural member is placed alongside another to lend it strength. What a beautiful image for being with someone who is grieving.

We don’t take over the weight. We don’t pretend their experience is ours. We come alongside.

And we don’t decide for them when it is time to move on.

Maybe remembrance asks this of us, too: to resist moving on simply because the world’s attention has. To remain present. Attentive. Willing to feel. To tend what hurts within us so that those closer to the center don’t have to tend it for us — and then to listen for what love might ask us to do.

This morning in meditation, I found myself sitting in the back of the Annunciation sanctuary. I’ve felt close to tears all week without entirely knowing why. I have reached out to those I love. A candle bearing the intentions of hope, love, and remembrance is burning beside me as I write this. And the sign in our yard — Our ❤️ is with Annunciation — has been moved a little closer to the road.

Small things. But mine to do.

There are no suffering Olympics we must qualify for before our sadness counts. We can honor that someone else is closer to the center of a loss without denying that our own hearts and bodies have been affected by what happened to people we love.

Perhaps tending our own experience, and listening for what it naturally moves us toward, is part of how we learn to accompany one another well.

A call. A candle. A sign in the yard. A meal. A name remembered. Sitting quietly beside someone. Something seen or unseen that says simply:

I am still here. I have not forgotten.

There is no right way to do this. No formula for how close we must be to a loss before we’re allowed to grieve, or what we should do with what we feel.

Only an invitation to notice.

What is happening within me?

What is mine to tend?

How might I come alongside?

Today, my heart is with Annunciation.

Let us remember them. Let us remember that we are naturally affected by what happens to one another. Let us remember that wherever grief brings us close to someone else’s sorrow, we can let our own hearts lead us toward what is ours to feel — and what is ours to offer.

Not because their story is ours.

But because we are in relationship with someone for whom it is. ❤️

I’m reminded of this even more strongly when we visit the Northwoods at our cabin, where we can sit on the dock after dark listening to the water lapping the shore, and watching fireflies punctuate the black depths in real time, just as the stars do from lightyears away.

I have celebrated this fascination for most of my life. How often do we remark how this simple act makes us feel astonishingly small, one life held within something immeasurably larger? The more years I have the privilege of entertaining the mystery of being, the more comfortable it seems I’ve become with holding the unknown.

Not because I’ve come upon any sure answers. Instead, there is something about the night that loosens my grip on certainty. Perhaps it’s because so much disappears. The way the trees become silhouettes, the familiar landscape softens, and the edges blur.

And then, as if in exchange, the stars appear. And the need to know fades away.

As galaxies hidden by daylight quietly announce themselves, and constellations that have been overhead all along step forward into the noticeable now, I am reminded that the darkness has not created them, but has simply made them visible.

Earlier this year, as we crossed the threshold into the light half of the year at Beltane, I carried an intention to deepen my relationship with light. Not simply sunshine or happiness. But light in all its forms – revelation, clarity, warmth, generosity, grace.

Love.

I expected, perhaps unconsciously, that walking toward light meant leaving my fascination with darkness behind. Instead, I’ve found that the more intimate I become with light, the more I find myself standing each evening beneath the stars.

Not by means of turning away from the light, but as a return to the place where I connect again to the knowing that light was never absent, only unnoticed. The place that first allows light to be seen.

***

We’ve inherited a suspicion of darkness on so many levels, equating it with fear, uncertainty, ignorance. In a desire to overcome it, we ignite every lamp, we rush toward answers and clarity, toward fixity.

Yet every seed begins in darkness. Each flower, each child, each dream and deep healing. Darkness is a space of receptivity, of allowing. A place where not everything has to announce itself immediately in order to be real.

As I explore this space of unknown with others, I am reminded time and again how mystery isn’t the absence of knowing, but offers a doorway into a different way of knowing altogether.

One that arrives through listening instead of grasping, relationship instead of control.

Through presence instead of certainty.

I’ve noticed this in my own life over the past year as the work I’ve been deepening into has become less about helping people find the right answers and more about helping us remain faithful to ourselves and our own inner unfolding while we don’t yet know.

What if we aren’t here to solve uncertainty, but to be in relationship with it?

I’ve begun to wonder if this is one of the sacred invitations of the dark – that it reveals truths that daylight cannot.

Where daylight helps us navigate, darkness helps us orient.

One tells us where we are going.

The other reminds us where we belong.

***

As the Wheel of the Year turns again toward the first harvest, the Celtic festival of Lughnasadh begins at sunset on Friday (7/31). It’s a celebration of seasonal abundance, yes.

But also of thresholds.

Somehow, even amidst the long drawn out days of summer, the light is already slowly turning toward autumn. Something imperceptible has shifted.

We are invited to reflect not only on what has grown, what we can harvest, but also, what has been growing quietly beneath the surface that is only now becoming visible?

Perhaps that’s why I find myself beneath the night sky these evenings. Not looking for certainty, or even for answers. But simply remembering that some things can only be seen once the world grows dark enough.

And perhaps that has always been one of the great gifts of darkness. Not that it hides the truth.

But that it reveals a deeper one. ✨

An Inquiry for Lughnasadh

As you cross this threshold into the first harvest, you might carry some version of these questions with you:

What has been ripening within me that I’m just now able to notice?

or perhaps,

What wisdom has the unknown been cultivating while I was waiting for clarity?

A Simple Threshold Ritual

At sunset, step outside if you are able.

Stand facing the sky as daylight gives way to night.

Take three slow breaths.

Notice what disappears.

Then notice what appears.

Without trying to interpret it, simply ask:

What is seen here that is often overlooked in the daylight?

Stay for a few moments longer than feels necessary.

Then return inside carrying not an answer, but a deeper relationship with mystery. ❤️

Seasonal movements offer endless opportunities to come into more conscious relationship with the unknown. If you’d like to explore a simple ritual practice of your own, I’ve created a free guide you’re welcome to play with.

You can find it here. You’ll be invited to share your email address to receive updates, inspirations, and opportunities not always shared here (unsubscribe anytime), and I’ll send directly to you. Enjoy ✨

I woke up one Sunday morning a couple of months ago with the absolute knowing I had to list it. In that hazy, liminal in-between space of not quite sleeping, not quite awake, where the soul knows to nudge us with information for our days, I heard this impulse as much as felt it.

I sat upright and asked T, still groggy with sleep, “Where’s my guitar? I have to sell it.”

We got up to take Ritter to the park and immediately started looking for it. I didn’t question that this needed to be done. Not because I didn’t have a choice.

But because it felt true.

It was time. Just something that needed doing, as if I had woken up remembering we needed to get dog food.

Not having found the guitar right away, when we returned from our walk, I kept looking. For years it had lived next to the piano I inherited from my grandma, both sitting similarly untouched (or lightly enjoyed) for longer than I care to admit. But it wasn’t there.

I laughed to myself as I searched the house high and low. T remembered it by the piano, as well. When the heck did I move it, I wondered as I opened every closet, searched under every bed.

Nothing.

“Did I sell it?” I asked T incredulously, thinking how ironic it would be to wake up so sure it needed selling if I already had.

Turns out I had not.

As I searched, I called out to it, literally asking it where it was. Within moments, I saw an image in my mind’s eye of a perfect hidey-hole in the back of the front hall closet. A closet where I had already looked.

Oh! I had suddenly remembered that strangely sized gap that formed in the corner where two shelving units came together. I remembered the cleaning frenzy I had been on that day wondering where I might rehome the guitar after years of it sitting by the piano, exactly the place where T and I had both recalled it being earlier that morning. I remembered how satisfying it had been that the guitar’s soft-sided case slid perfectly into that little space.

Maybe the rehoming it was asking for years ago was misinterpreted as a game of hide-and-seek. Amazing how hiding the guitar away then had ended up so permanent that I had forgotten about it almost completely.

Once found, I pulled it from its case, ran the polishing rag over the near perfect surface, gathered all of the accessories – strings, capo, tuner, picks – from the case’s front pocket and arranged them all for a photo shoot. As I did, I reflected on our 30 years together.

This guitar was a gift in my mid-twenties, when life itself felt full of possibility. My love of folk music, singing, writing, exploring — all of it seemed to gather around this beautiful instrument. It became part of that season, whether I ever learned to play it well or not.

Is there anything better than those early years where everything feels possible?

And it was. Deliciously so.

I tried to teach myself. I tried asking for help. I tried taking lessons. I tried writing songs with it. And on more than one occasion, I spent weeks practicing daily to build up callouses, only to realize how uncomfortable it was to have such different sensation in my fingertips. It made everything feel weird, especially finding my fingers’ place on the computer keyboard to write.

And I spent a lot of time at the keyboard.

So I’d stop playing and wait just as many weeks for the callouses to peel off. An experience to be sure. I was more thrilled when the peeling was done, which might have told me what I needed to know.

But still, I kept that guitar. Perhaps for the possibility it represented. Perhaps for the dreams not ready to release.

Some things are easier held onto than admitted.

As I took the photos and wrote the Marketplace ad, I allowed myself to get real about the stage of life I’m in in relation to my resonant, stringed friend. I could still learn how to play if I wanted to – it wasn’t that. But if I was honest, I knew the dream was no longer there. And if I wasn’t ever going to play it, what if it was time to pass it on?

Maybe it was something my soul knew before my mind did.

It took one Sunday morning, a nudge, and a willingness to trust it enough to say ‘yes’.

We reminisced a little together that afternoon, the guitar and I, plucking a few chords, singing a few songs. By the end of the afternoon the ad was posted. And then I waited.

And waited. And waited.

Weeks went by. I renewed the ad a handful of times at Marketplace’s prompting to keep it relevant in the listings. Nothing. I lowered the price. Absolute crickets.

As I had when I hid it in the corner of the closet, I forgot about it.

Until late one afternoon last week, a Messenger notification asking if I’d take even less for it, and offering to come get it that afternoon.

Again, my ‘yes’ came without hesitation, with the same comfortable knowing as when I woke up that one Sunday nudged to sell it. We made a plan for when and where to meet – within the hour – and before I knew it, I watched a teenager, maybe 14 years old, climb out of his family van to exchange a little hard earned cash for my guitar.

His mom beamed, “he wants to learn the guitar!”

“Perfect!” I met her enthusiasm. I turned to the teen who was now awkwardly grinning, no doubt ready to get back in the van and check out his new find. “It’ll be great for you.”

And I believe it.

As I drove away, I said one last thank you for the place that guitar held for me for more than half my life. Dreams, imagination, possibility, many tries (so many tries!), lots of singing and adventures writing and creating together. It was time to pass the torch, to set it free for a new life with a new young person who needed to be held the way it held me.

I am still beside myself in imagining – the bonfires they might play at, the planes they might fly on, the admirers they might swoon. My heart so full, so happy, so excited for their new beginning together.

Maybe 30 years from now (or sooner) he’ll be ready to trade up or to let go. To move his guitar on to another young person full of dreams, ambition, and that creative spark. Wouldn’t it be wonderful?

Thanks, sweet guitar. For filling my heart with song. For holding that space of possibility and wonder with me so faithfully all those years. And for eventually inviting me to be honest – not about what our relationship wasn’t, but about what had quietly become true.

These days, I’m noticing these quiet knowings a little sooner. Not because life is speaking any louder.

But because its voice is more and more familiar. ❤️

Mostly we decide in real time regardless of the season, gauging present conditions, including whether we’re up for early-morning-before-breakfast hills.

It’s a real consideration. 😉

However, after our Saturday walk last week we decided Sunday morning we’d do the woods. In rare plan-ahead fashion, I thought how fun it would be to bring my mom flowers from our garden. While I generally keep an eye out for some treasure to bring her as we walk – heart-shaped stones, pine cones, oak “poms”, whatever little delights nudge me along the way – this felt different. Like a new adventure.

Barefoot in the dew soaked grass of our yard early Sunday, I meandered from garden bed to garden bed holding my mom in my heart and asking which blooms wanted to join the bouquet I was gathering. A treasured lavender iris, bearded and fragrant, bright pink and jeweled red peonies, sunset peachy-orange dahlia, deep purple bachelor buttons – a direct transport from her garden to mine many years ago. Bleeding hearts. A lovely array came together, tied together with gratitude and her blue garden twine.

We loaded up in the truck and headed out for the park. And then a funny thing happened.

As if she knew we were coming, as if she had been wandering the yard with me choosing her favorite flowers for her bouquet...

🌈

...a rainbow appeared and stayed with us the whole fifteen minute drive to the park.

On our walk, other treasures appeared in my path – a heart rock, a feather, a mechanical pencil.

A pencil? Seriously?

Of all things. It made me laugh out loud.

This woman was a prolific list maker on white, unlined index cards — in pencil. Never in pen.

Always. Pencil.

What an amusing nod! Very specifically, uniquely, ridiculously my mom. Right there in the middle of a trail in the woods.

I know that when we go to the bench it isn’t as if it’s the only place we can be with her, or talk with her, or connect. I trust we are always connected.

And yet there is something about this place — the plaque we wrote in her memory, this park that holds such meaning for us, the horses that so often ride past (her favorite!), the intentional pilgrimage we make to visit her there.

I arrive carrying her with me. My awareness heightened as I ask for treasures to bring her way.

And somehow, they arrive.

Flowers from the garden.
A rainbow.
A heart-shaped stone.
A feather.

A pencil.

As if she joins us by coming out to play.

My mom died nearly two-and-a-half years ago now. It’s unfathomable. And, I’m reminded that every day is an opportunity to reimagine what our relationship now could be.

Can be.

Is. ❤️

Treasures have a funny way of appearing when we slow down enough to notice them. If you’d like to explore a simple ritual practice of your own, I’ve created a free guide you’re welcome to play with.

You can find it here. You’ll be invited to share your email address, and I’ll send directly to you. Enjoy ✨

As I clicked the link and read through, I noticed something unexpected — a familiar face in the sidebar. A link to a 2019 article I had been interviewed for, alongside other end-of-life doulas. My photo on the cover.

I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a fun discovery.

Since then, I’ve seen a number of similar articles, all circling the same questions — what is a death doula, why this role, why now.

And while those are important questions, I find myself less interested in answering them directly and more interested in what is happening underneath them.

Because companioning the dying isn’t new. But something about our evolving willingness to meet it is.

I’ve spent the past decade walking alongside people at the end of life — not just as a role, but as a relationship. And what I’ve come to see is that the most important work at the end of life isn’t about managing what’s happening.

It’s about learning how to be with what cannot be fixed. It’s about staying.

And perhaps what’s emerging now — in articles, in conversations, in quiet callings people are beginning to feel — isn’t a new role at all.

But a remembering.

A remembering that there is more happening as someone nears the end of their life than what we can see in the body — illness, decline, symptoms, the progression of disease.

Death is more than whether the breath continues, or when it concludes.

It is relationship.
Connection.
Community.
Memory.

The quiet, often unspoken wondering about where we’ve been, where we’re going, and why we were here at all.

It’s what I’ve come to think of as the unwinding of a life.

And in the midst of the swirl of activity — as physical needs are tended to — there is a deep inner process that so often goes unseen.

Imagine how different death could be if there were space for that unwinding.

What I find most remarkable about the moment we’re in is this:

The more we allow death to be what it is — a natural part of life — the more space we create for our own experience of it.

And in turn, the more able we are to allow with others the fullness of the death that is theirs. ❤️

“I’m with you,” he replied, picking up his pace until he was right behind us.

Ritter stopped every so often to tend his wound, licking at the edges of a gash about an inch-and-a-half in length across his right foreleg, deep enough that the skin sagged and the blood pooled. It was hard to get a good enough look at it to see what needed to be done, but it was clear that continuing our hike was not an option. Being a Saturday, if it required attention we would be going to the emergency vet, which is never an economical option. But I have their number at hand – we’ve needed it before – just in case.

My gut said he needed stitches. But I somehow couldn’t get myself to land on that choice. I began to question myself, wondering, what if it isn’t as bad as I think?

When else in my life had I had an inner conversation like this? I felt myself heading down a familiar track – not trusting what I knew and scrambling internally for an answer that wasn’t mine.

Strangely calm, I dialed the vet as we walked. I explained that we were hiking, that Ritter ran into the woods as he often does, and came out injured. We had no idea what happened and though hurt, he seemed largely unperturbed. They suggested we come in, but I hesitated. I asked if I could send them a photo to get their opinion and then wondered to myself if anyone ever does this. Should it be this hard to decide? It all just felt off in a way I couldn’t name.

We stopped, took a photo, sent it to them, and kept walking, T and I not saying much to each other – which was like us – as we processed all the pieces ourselves first.

Meanwhile, my head was swimming – what if we go in for stitches and spend all that money and it would have been fine without it? What if we do nothing and wait too long and then our regular vet on Monday wouldn’t be able to suture it, leading to a worse outcome?

And immediately after our outing, we were to go to brunch to see our nephew and niece who were home from college and our younger niece who was heading out for her own spring break the next day. It’s rare these days that we have the opportunity to be all together like that. It tugged at me to miss it and I struggled with the timing. Why now?

But duty called. No matter how hard my mind tried to get around what was required, to delay things, to not need help, to save money, to control time, to get a “do over” where we didn’t let him run into the underbrush where we couldn’t see him.

There was little space among the swirl.

The vet recommended stitches. We arrived at their office by 9:30am. Five hours later, we were lifting our woozy pup – cone of shame and all – into the backseat of the truck. A clumsy endeavor if ever there was one. He swayed and bumped all the way home. Once inside, he sacked out for hours sleeping off the anesthesia from his procedure as we sat with him and kept watch, dozing off and on ourselves.

As I let myself get quiet, lying by Ritter’s side on the floor loving on him as much as he’d allow, I eventually felt what was under the swirl of the morning.

My first call in times like these was always to my mom.

Tuning into the grief that threaded its way through the day’s events, tears came and I could feel my body thrumming with recognition. It was a strange mix to realize that my inner scramble was less about not trusting myself as much as it was about really getting that the one I would have leaned into was no longer there.

And I needed to do it anyway.

Of course. Part of my struggle with what was happening was anchored in not having her to call on in the same way. It meant I had to find my way anew. Yet another reminder of how things had changed and would never be the same. Of course I hadn’t wanted to navigate this myself and floundered when I felt that I needed to, when what was missing became unmistakable.

Once those pieces fell into place, I leaned into our connection as it was and let that be my something new.

“Thank you, mama,” I whispered through tears and imagined her with us through all of it – as we blissfully hiked, in the discomfort of noticing Ritter was bleeding, as we sorted what to do next, even encircling him with all of our beloved animals from over the years while he was having his procedure to help him feel safe. And there, right there with us on the floor, close by as my fingers tousled Ritter’s soft fur, as I felt myself settle with the gentle rise and fall of his chest.

This. I could still lean into my mom like this. ❤️

If it feels supportive, I’ve created a simple ritual guide you’re welcome to use — a gentle way of staying with yourself in moments like these.

You can find it for free here. You’ll be invited to share your email address, and it will be sent directly to you. Enjoy ✨

So much feels unsettled — in the world, in our communities, in our nervous systems, in our sense of what comes next. Old structures are shifting or failing. Familiar reference points no longer orient us the way they once did. Many of us are carrying both an urgency to respond and a profound fatigue — with so much that feels important, and no clear sense of when the pressure will ease.

I’ve been feeling this too.

Which is why the language of threshold has been returning to me again and again.

Imbolc — an ancient threshold echoed today in St. Brigid’s Day, Groundhog Day, and Candlemas — marks a beginning, though not the kind we’re often taught to look for. It’s less a single day and more a passage we move through slowly, arriving in early February when winter still holds strong. In many earth-honoring traditions, Imbolc names the first quiet stirrings of life beneath the surface: seeds warming in frozen ground, energy gathering long before anything can be seen.

Not spring.
Not resolution.
But potential.

What’s striking to me is how closely this mirrors the moment we’re living in — collectively and personally. We are at a threshold out there in the world, and we are also at thresholds in here, within our own lives. There is work to tend in both places.

There are real things to respond to.
Real responsibilities to hold.
Real ways we show up for one another and for what’s being asked of us.

And.

There is also inner work that cannot be skipped — the kind that happens quietly, slowly, and often out of view.

In the dark.

When I speak of trusting the dark, I’m not talking about the darkness we are witnessing in the world — the harm, the injustice, the cruelty that must be named and addressed. I am speaking of a different kind of dark altogether.

The dark as refuge.
The dark as womb.
The dark as the place where we rest, restore, dream, and listen.

This is the dark where we come home to ourselves — where we tend our nervous systems, metabolize grief, touch what is still good and life-giving, and remember why we care at all. It is the dark that allows something new to form without being prematurely exposed or forced into shape.

And living here — even briefly — asks something different of us than the usual rhythms of pushing forward or trying to figure it out.

Especially when the world feels on fire. Especially when we want nothing more than winter to be over and to get on with things.

Imbolc has surprised me like that. I expected this season to ask me to offer something outward — a gathering, a container, a clear next step. Instead, what has been asked of me is to slow down even more. To listen longer. To allow what’s stirring to return underground for more time, more space, more quiet.

This has brought me into a question I’m living with now — and perhaps you are too:

Not “What should I do?”
but “What is mine to do?”

It’s a subtler question. A more relational one. It doesn’t demand immediacy or certainty. It invites listening — listening for what is yours to carry, yours to tend, yours to offer — and just as importantly, what is not.

For me, that listening looks like creating quietly, meditating, resting where I can, staying present to daily life, and letting myself be shaped by this moment rather than rushing to shape it. It’s a way of staying resourced — not so I can withdraw from the world, but so I can meet it with clarity, steadiness, and integrity when the next step does reveal itself.

If you find yourself in a similar place — sensing something stirring but not yet knowing what it is or what it will ask of you — I want to offer this reassurance:

You are not late.
You are not failing to act.
You are not doing it wrong.

You may be standing in a potent, necessary pause — one that allows your inner life to catch up with the times we’re living in.

In moments like these, our task is not only to respond, but to remain human. To stay present. To tend what is hard and take refuge in what is good — even when that goodness feels fragile, or hard to admit. To hold the dream of the world we long for while staying honest about the one we’re in.

Imbolc doesn’t end on a date.
It lingers, inviting us to listen longer than we might think we should.

The light will return.
The spring will come.

Until then, we tend the underground.
We listen — deeply, patiently, together.
And we trust that what is forming in the dark is not wasted time, but necessary preparation. ❤️

If you’re drawn to ritual as a gentle way of staying in relationship with the season — without needing to know what comes next — I’ve made a free, simple ritual guide available here. To receive it, you’ll be invited to share your email address, and the guide will be sent directly to you. It’s offered as a companion, not a prescription, and you’re welcome to it if it feels supportive.

The days are still cold and quiet. Winter has not loosened its grip. And yet — almost against our will — we begin to notice the light returning. A few minutes more each day. A subtle shift that says something is turning.

For some, this brings relief.
For others, a quiet unease.

I find myself wanting to stay in the dark just a little longer — to honor what has not yet finished resting in me. And at the same time, I can feel the faintest swirl of excitement, a barely-there anticipation that whispers of spring long before it arrives.

Both are true.
Do you feel it, too?

This is where I’ve been leaning into a simple practice I’ve come to call The Gentle Return.

Not a method for pushing forward.
Not a strategy for catching up.

But a way of staying with myself at the threshold — any threshold — especially when it’s easy to lose grounding as I’m pulled in more than one direction at once. I notice this now as the world already seems to be rushing ahead into the year, and an old conditioning in me worries that by honoring rest and quiet listening, I’m falling behind.

There is value in being present with wherever we are.

Practiced in this season, The Gentle Return helps me ride the edge — this threshold edge — where it’s easy to leave ourselves in one direction or the other.

For some of us, the pull is toward staying in the dark — lingering, resting, wanting not to be hurried before we’re ready.

For others, the pull is toward the light — an eagerness to move, to begin, to leave the heaviness behind.

Both impulses make sense.

The edge lives between resisting the darkness that remains and rushing too quickly toward what’s next. Between holding back and pressing forward. Between staying and emerging.

The practice, I’m finding, is in noticing how we’re holding this tension, and the nuances of feeling all of the things all at once.

When I feel tugged forward or back, unable to find steadiness in the present moment, I pause. I place a hand on my heart and breathe — one long, slow breath in; one long, slow breath out — as a way of remembering:

I’m allowed to move at the pace of what is true.
I’m allowed to linger.
I’m allowed to feel the stirrings without fully acting on them yet.

When we don’t rush past this edge — in either direction — we allow what wants to move through us now to come more fully into form. We give tenderness the time it needs. We trust the unseen work happening beneath the surface, much like the seeds still buried deep in the earth, quietly doing what they know how to do.

We allow ourselves to listen for what wants to be nurtured yet before it is shared.

I wonder, what are you hearing?

In the weeks ahead, I’ll be offering a small gathering aligned with this kind of seasonal turning — a way to meet the quiet stirrings without rushing them into form.

For now, I don’t yet know what this will become. I only know that I’m listening closely, and I hear its call.

If you’re here too — navigating this threshold in your own way — I’m glad for the company. ❤️

For us, they were spent exploring the snowy prairie and woods in the hundreds of acres of park near our home. From wide, expansive views to deeply enclosed wooded trails, each day in this liminal space between years was filled with a quiet kind of magic.

We’d walk to the crunch of snow under our boots and then be compelled to stop — to listen, to wait for what came next.

In most cases, it was nothing.
Nothing came next.

Just feeling for the next impulse to continue walking, one boot in front of the other.
Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.

Occasionally, a bird would cheep. A squirrel would chatter.
We’d listen.
We’d move on.

Somewhere along the way, I sensed the pine trees welcoming me deeper off the beaten path, inviting me to walk among them. Did I hear them, or feel them? It’s hard to say. Only that I felt compelled again.

Stop.
Listen.
Respond in kind to what you hear.

Before I knew it, I was in among the pines making a snow angel—on my back, looking up in complete and utter joy at the branches holding thick swaths of freshly fallen snow.

It was magic.
I was exactly where the season needed me to be.

***

January has its own intelligence.

Not the clean-slate, back-to-business version we’re often offered,
but an older knowing — one that understands winter as a place of gestation, communication, and connection rather than tidy resolution.

This is the season when the world does not ask us to be legible.
It invites us more deeply in.

There is mystery here.
There is potential and possibility we might otherwise miss.

The days are still short. The ground is holding what cannot yet be seen. Beneath the surface, life is listening more than it is moving. It wants us to remember that we can listen, too.

I find myself wanting to honor that — to stay a little longer in the dark. Not as withdrawal from a modern world that wants us always producing and blooming, but as participation.

There is a particular kind of pressure that arrives in early January. A not-so-subtle push toward re-entry. Toward bypassing the invitation to be and sprinting headlong into declaration — announcing, planning, committing.

As if we could possibly know what the year will bring when we haven’t yet turned our hearts to hear what gifts it might hold.

Even when the voices are kind, even when the work is soulful, the cumulative effect can feel like being asked to speak before the words have fully formed.

So, I’m practicing something quieter.

I’m letting myself stay with what is unfinished.
Letting questions remain questions.
Letting the light return at its own pace.

This isn’t a disappearance.
It’s a listening.

What if we stay?

After the hubbub of holiday hoopla, when — if we’re honest — our hearts want nothing more than a little more rest. A little more of what grandmother moon is offering out there in the deep dark winter sky.

I trust that what is meant to come forward will do so in its own time — carried by the same rhythm that brings the lengthening days, the slow thaw, the first honest stirrings beneath frozen ground.

For now, I’m keeping company with the dark.
Not rushing it.
Not trying to improve it.

Just being here, faithful to the season as it is.
Listening for what’s next.

Soon, the light will begin to stir.
Until then… ❤️

I believe this. And I also believe there is something particular — and particularly unspoken — about Year 2.

Year 1 comes with a strange kind of scaffolding. There is often support wrapped around you: hospice grief programs, check-in calls, casseroles, permission to cancel plans, the collective understanding that you are “in it.” Year 1 is full of firsts, and as brutal as those are, they come with a clear task: get through. Head down. Step after step. One breath, one memory, one unthinkable milestone at a time.

And you do get through. You’re here to tell the tale.

Which is where Year 2 begins.

No one really talks about Year 2. The supports thin out. The world subtly assumes you’re back to normal, or at least functional. The calendar begins repeating itself, but now without the novelty — or the permission — of the firsts. You find yourself facing down the same milestones, except this time you’re doing it largely on your own. And you’re doing it in the midst of your everyday life.

The hallmark of Year 2, at least as I’ve experienced it this past year, is this quiet, devastating realization:

I have to keep living.

Not despite the loss.
But with it.

***

We are nearing the end of our second holiday season without my mom. She died in January 2024, which means this stretch — Thanksgiving through mid-January — is a concentrated corridor of memory and meaning. She carved the turkey. Cookie baking was our thing. Christmas held her in a hundred big and small ways. Her birthday is New Year’s Eve. The anniversary of her death follows shortly after. Six weeks where she was everywhere, and now is nowhere — and somehow still both.

This Thanksgiving surprised me. It was tender and beautiful in ways I didn’t expect. That gave me hope for the weeks to come. I thought, maybe I’m doing okay. Maybe I can just…do this.

And so I tried.

As I typically would, I planned all the things: the cards, the decorations, the lights, more cookies (always more cookies), wrapping early so there would be something under the tree. Few of these plans actually came to pass. Still, I intended to keep the season festive. Light. Moving. As a holiday should go. Right?

There have been lovely moments. And what I hadn’t realized was that beneath them lived an unspoken pressure — the expectation that somehow it could be holiday as usual, if I just tried hard enough.

Last Sunday, everything stopped.

I couldn’t run another errand.
I couldn’t listen to another carol.
I couldn’t buy another gift.
I couldn’t make another plan.

I’ve been intentionally creating spaces for others to slow down, to rest, to be with what’s true. And somewhere along the way, I stopped allowing that for myself. In overwhelm and tears, I put on my noise-canceling headphones, curled up in a chair, and stared out the window. For hours. The silence offered a relief so profound it felt like remembering something I’d forgotten how to do.

What became clear in that stillness was this: I had been on autopilot. Without realizing it, I was acting as if she were still here, assuming everything could be normal and I wouldn’t have to feel the rupture or make any new choices. On some level, I told myself it was kindness to expect the season to hold me in this way. But there was a dissonance that registered inside as pressure. Like unconsciously forcing myself to live in a world that no longer exists.

Ah…right.
Of course it can’t be holiday as usual.

Of course it can’t.

It’s humbling to realize this, especially because this is the work I do. I know how to sit with grief. I know how to offer support, how to name thresholds, how to tend what’s tender. And still, my own grief continues to ask for things no one else can define for me. No roadmap, no well-meaning advice, no shared story can tell me exactly how this loss wants to be lived with — as is the way with all losses.

Grief is intimate that way. It teaches us in a language that can’t be borrowed. However much we learn from one another, we still have to listen ourselves into it — into who we are becoming now.

Year 1 is about surviving. Year 2 is about living. About learning how to live with the loss. About beginning the slow work of culling what stays and what goes. What gets carried forward. What must be set down. How traditions change shape. How something new and more sustainable begins to emerge — unmistakably yours — without erasing what came before.

This is not a clean process. It is uneven and deeply personal. There is grief not only for who we lost, but for the life we can no longer recreate.

However you may be experiencing a Year 2 — recently or long past — know this: there is nothing wrong with you if it feels harder than expected. There is nothing wrong if the way things were stop working. There is nothing wrong if you find yourself asking, quietly or desperately,

How do I live now?

That question isn’t a failure.
It’s the work.

❤️

If you’d like something gentle to walk with you through the turning of the year, I’ve created a simple ritual guide to support you in tending your own important moments — a spacious companion to help you slow down and reconnect with what matters. It’s called Creating Everyday Rituals of Connection.

✨ You can receive your free ritual guide here ✨

It’s there if it serves. My gift to you.

And as the year winds down, I want to thank you for being here, for your presence, and for the ways you’ve supported this blog through the years. There are some things stirring for 2026 that I think you’ll love. 💖

not to hold the light tightly,
not to make something of it,
but simply to carry it with care.

The light we tend in midwinter is not meant to blaze or perform. It is intimate. Personal. It knows the terrain of our lives — the griefs, the hopes, the unfinished stories — and it asks only for tenderness as it moves with us.

You do not need to protect it from the world.
You do not need to explain it.
You only need to keep returning to it, the way one returns to something beloved.

If you want to invite this in for yourself, to take it deeper:

Take a moment to acknowledge something in you that has softened, steadied, or quietly strengthened this week. Place a hand over your heart and offer it a simple blessing — no words required.

Let that feeling accompany you into the closing days of the year.

Thank you, friends. Your presence in this space is a gift. It has been a true gift walking this midwinter threshold together.

❤️

Tender presence is not a demand for stillness or silence. It’s a willingness to return — again and again — to what is actually happening in the body and the breath.

To meet ourselves with the same kindness we offer so readily to others.

Even brief moments of presence can soften the edges of a busy day. A pause. A breath. A hand placed gently over the heart. These small acts remind us that we are here, and that here is enough.

If you want to invite this in for yourself, to take it deeper:

Choose one ordinary moment — washing your hands, waiting in line, sitting down — and let yourself fully arrive there. Notice the breath, the sensations, the simple fact of being alive in this moment.

Tomorrow, we carry the light with care.

❤️

✨ I’ll be sharing a brief daily reflection here through December 24 — consider this a small midwinter gift. We’re in this together. ✨

Just a subtle shift that asks to be noticed rather than proven.

So it is with us.

What is returning may not look like relief or clarity yet. It may arrive as a softening, a hint of energy, a small willingness where there was none before. These beginnings are easy to overlook, especially when we’re still tired or uncertain.

Winter reminds us that growth does not hurry. The earth trusts the slow work of returning light, and we can, too.

If you want to invite this in for yourself, to take it deeper:

Tune in for the most subtle sign of return — a moment of warmth, a flicker of interest, a breath that feels slightly easier. Just let yourself notice. Acknowledge it without asking it to be more than it is. Even the smallest shift in light carries a promise.

Tomorrow, we practice tender presence.

❤️

✨ I’ll be sharing a brief daily reflection here through December 24 — consider this a small midwinter gift. I’m right here by your side. ✨

This is not a darkness to fear or rush past.
It is a darkness that knows how to hold us.

So much of what we carry lives here: grief, uncertainty, longing, the unnamed ache of being human.

The Solstice invites us not to banish these things, but to stand beside them with kindness. To let the dark be a place of gestation rather than judgment.

There is a quiet courage in staying.
In not reaching immediately for answers.
In allowing what is unseen to do its slow, faithful work.

If you want to invite this in for yourself, to take it deeper:

Turn off the lights for a few moments. Let your eyes adjust. Then light a single candle and watch how even the smallest flame steadies the room. Notice what in you softens simply by being here, trusting the wisdom of the dark.

Tomorrow, we begin to notice what is returning.

❤️

✨ I’ll be sharing a brief daily reflection here through December 24 — consider this a small midwinter gift. You will never walk alone. ✨

Fatigue is not a failure.
Slowness is not a flaw.

They are signals — invitations to soften our grip and listen more closely to what is asking for care.

So much of the world urges us to push through, to override the body’s quiet requests. But this season reminds us that restoration doesn’t come from effort. It comes from allowing what is tired to rest, even briefly, even imperfectly.

If you want to invite this in for yourself, to take it deeper:

Choose one small way to make something easier. Cancel or soften a plan. Sit down before you think you’ve earned it. Close your eyes for a few breaths. Let your shoulders drop as if the day is no longer asking quite so much of you.

Tomorrow, we stand in the dark with love.

❤️

✨ I’ll be sharing a brief daily reflection here through December 24 — consider this a small midwinter gift. It is a wonder to walk with you in the in-between. ✨

In the dimming days of midwinter, we don’t need to illuminate the whole path. We only need enough light to remind us where we are, and that we are not alone. A single candle. A cleared corner. A pause long enough to notice warmth where there was none before.

So often we wait to feel better before tending ourselves with care. But winter teaches a different way: we make space first — and the light meets us there.

If you want to invite this in for yourself, to take it deeper:

Choose one small space and let it become a place for light. Light a candle, place a stone or photo there, or simply let sunlight fall across it. Sit with it for one quiet minute. No fixing. No meaning-making. Just noticing how it feels to let light be, however it arrives. Even in the darkest of the dark.

Tomorrow, we let what’s tired rest.

❤️

✨ I’ll be sharing a brief daily reflection here through December 24 — consider this a small midwinter gift. You are welcome here. ✨

Not after you’ve sorted yourself out.
Not once you feel ready.

But right here — in this moment that is already unfolding, already carrying its own truth.

As the year leans toward its darkest night, you may feel the tug of fatigue, longing, resistance, or quiet hope. Whatever you carry belongs. Let it come with you unchanged.

You don’t have to tidy anything to enter this moment with care.

If you want to invite this in for yourself, to take it deeper:

Pause for a single breath. Place a hand on your heart or somewhere that feels tender. Whisper — silently or aloud — “I begin here.” Let this be enough.

Tomorrow we make a small space for light.

❤️

✨ I’ll be sharing a brief daily reflection here through December 24 — consider this a small midwinter gift. Feel free to read only what serves you. ✨

It’s becoming clear now that winter is knocking at the door.

Each year, as the veil thins at Samhain and the clocks fall back, I feel a quiet turning inside me. As the days shorten and the light softens, the Earth begins her long exhale into stillness. It takes some mental reordering to truly understand – we’ve entered the descent, the six weeks leading us toward Winter Solstice.

The darkest dark of the year.

In our culture, it is tempting to rush toward the promise of light. We march forward into the holiday season of hurry and scurry, setting our sights on the six weeks beyond Winter Solstice and the new year that will carry us toward Imbolc, when the first hints of light return.

In essence, the full arc — this sacred passage between worlds — is twelve weeks long. Yet for now, I feel called not to leap ahead, but to linger here, in the deepening dark.

We prefer beginnings to endings, movement to stillness, certainty to mystery. But this first half of winter’s arc asks something different of us. It asks us to let go of striving and to learn the art of being — to trust the wisdom of rest, decay, and unseen transformation.

The trees are our teachers now. They release what no longer serves, letting their leaves become soil for next spring’s growth. The animals retreat into burrows, conserving energy, listening to the heartbeat of the earth. Even the sun yields to night, offering less of itself each day. Mother Earth herself embraces this darkening.

What if we, too, could understand this as part of the cycle of life?

To live in alignment with these weeks and what they ask of us as beings of nature is to remember that these, too, are our rhythms. We are invited to loosen our grip on productivity, to pause our endless lists, to soften the edges of our own expectations. This is not a time for pushing forward, but for falling inward — to our depths, to meaning, to deeper purpose found only in moments of stillness.

What if some essential aspect of us is being grown in these spaces of dark? What if we are being renewed in this womb of time and space, as the roots of all living things grow deeper beneath the frozen ground? This invisible work — even if we cannot yet name it — is being done on us as well, if we slow down and allow.

As we move into this threshold space, I find myself wondering:

• How can I align with this sacred slowing?

• What parts of me are ready to rest, to dissolve, to return to the soil of my becoming?

• What might emerge if I allowed myself to be held by the dark instead of resisting it?

Into my fifty-fifth such season, I am reminded that these are not questions to answer quickly. As sacred questions do, they travel with us. They become companions for our journey into the darkness and out again. In the softness of early morning, or the hush of late evening, they whisper reminders that we are not separate from the earth’s pulse. The same life that draws sap down into the roots draws us toward our own depth.

If we can stay with this descent — not rushing to turn on the lights against the dark, not skipping ahead to the lengthening days — we may begin to feel the holiness of this inward movement. The world around us grows still on purpose. And it is in that stillness that we hear things we miss in the bright seasons: the creak of a bare branch, the steady breath of our own hearts, the quiet guidance of intuition that only speaks when the noise and busyness subside.

To embrace this journey into the dark is to practice faith — not in outcomes, but in process. It is to remember that life renews itself in ways unseen. We are always becoming — always dying to aspects of who we are that we’ve outgrown, and becoming again.

The seed does not fear the soil. The moon does not question its waning. The winter night does not apologize for its length.

Can we honor this cycle in ourselves as well?

As we make our way through these weeks from Samhain to Solstice, may we let the dark shape us. May we let it slow us down enough to feel what is true, to listen to what has been waiting to be heard.

When the Solstice finally arrives, the light will inevitably begin its slow return — not as an escape from darkness, but as its continuation, its completion. The cycle will turn, as it always does. But the gift of this season is found not in the anticipation of what’s next, but in the courage to be fully present, fully here. Now.

So let us rest into the rhythm that holds us. Let us trust that Mother Earth knows what she’s doing — out there in nature and within our own souls, too.

The light will come in its time.
For now, the dark is enough. ❤️

wonder of all things is a free offering for all. If you’d like to support me in my work, I gratefully receive donations here:

donate your support ❤️

The Celts called this season of turning Samhain (pronounced SOW-in, translated as “summer’s end”), the cross-quarter holy day marking the end of the harvest and the beginning of the new year.

To those who lived by the rhythms of earth and sky, Samhain was a sacred pause, a time when we cross into the great in-between and the veil between worlds grew thin. The ancestors drew near. The living listened.

Even in today’s world, when we feel far away from the old ways, many of us sense this thinning. The air itself seems charged with memory. Dreams deepen. The invisible hum of connection feels stronger and more personal.

The Season of Remembering

My dear grandmother died this time of year seven years ago. Many others I have been fortunate to companion through their final breath have chosen autumn to depart, as well. Somehow, within the tenderness and melancholy of the natural world turning toward rest in the fall, we see that endings and beginnings belong together — that the dark is not empty, but alive with presence and possibility.

Regardless of when a loved one dies, Samhain invites us to remember our beloveds and to, in essence, welcome them home. In the Celtic imagination, the relationship between the living and the dead was never broken; it only changed form. To remember was to tend the thread of belonging that continues beyond time.

Last night, I set up our altar of remembrance – photos and small objects that carry the presence of each of our loves. I haven’t always done this, but the longer I live, the more people who move on, the more deeply I’m called to tend these connections. Throughout the holidays we will keep this space alive in their memory, as much for them as for us.

This practice is accessible to all of us if we feel called. We can honor our ancestral relationships in simple ways: by lighting a candle at dusk, whispering their names, or setting a small altar — a photograph, a stone, a leaf gathered on a walk. This is how we say: You are not forgotten. Your story lives in me.

For when we remember our dead, we also remember how to live. The awareness of death has always been a teacher — reminding us that life is brief and sacred, that love is what endures, that we are part of something far larger than our individual selves.

Nature’s Wisdom

As the leaves fall and the world turns inward, nature shows us what it means to release. Nothing in the natural world holds tight to what has been. The trees let go. The garden turns to compost. The land exhales.

The Celtic year begins not in spring’s light, but in November’s fertile dark – a reminder that new life always begins unseen. To start the year in the dark was to trust the wisdom of the earth — that endings open into beginnings, and that what is hidden will, in time, rise again.

In this, Samhain reminds us that endings are not failures; they are part of the ongoing rhythm of creation. Death feeds life. Letting go makes room for what wants to emerge. This is as true for our inner lives as it is for the forest floor.

When we slow down enough to notice, we can see that the wisdom of this season lives in us too.

Living Within the Mystery

To live in rhythm with the seasons in this way is to live within the mystery — to honor what can’t be explained or controlled. It asks us to soften into the unknown, to trust the intelligence that moves through all things.

This is what I call threshold living — a way of being that recognizes we are always between worlds. Between what we’ve known and what we’re becoming. Between one breath and the next. Between the tangible and the unseen.

In my own work and practice, I return again and again to this truth: that the sacred is not elsewhere. It lives in the ordinary — in the light of a candle, the sound of the wind, the presence of memory, the heartbeat of grief and gratitude. The threshold is here, in the middle of our daily lives, waiting for our attention.

When we tend these moments with care — when we pause, listen, and make meaning — we participate in a more ancient way of knowing. We remember that we belong to a larger story, one that holds both our endings and our beginnings, both our living and our dying, in the same tender hands.

An Invitation

As we move into the next few days, you might consider creating a small ritual of your own:

• Light a candle at dusk and sit in silence for a few moments.

• Bring to mind someone you love who has crossed the veil.

• Speak their name. Remember their laugh, their kindness, the way they shaped your life.

• Offer thanks.

Then, turn your attention inward:

What are you ready to release? What has completed its season within you? What quiet beginning might be stirring beneath the surface?

Just listen.

These small acts of remembrance and reflection weave the sacred back into the fabric of the everyday. They remind us that we are part of the great turning of things — that we, too, are being renewed through cycles of loss and becoming. ❤️

A Blessing for the Threshold

May you walk gently through this in-between time.
May the presence of those who came before you light your way.
May what has ended give root to new life.
And may you find, even in the dark, the quiet pulse of your own becoming.

wonder of all things is a free offering for all. If you’d like to support me in my work, I gratefully receive donations here:

donate your support ❤️

Perhaps, more accurately, I was born with curiosity and questions about the world that needed sorting.

Often, I joke that I emerged from the womb this way, pen at the ready. But really, I wonder how old I was when my hand was indeed able to form around an implement made for marking. I imagine young enough to then want to put it directly in my mouth and taste it. Twelve-months? A little older?

Some of my earliest memories are of me with paper and pencil recording my thoughts. What happened that day, which friends I played with, what boy held my affections. Poems, song lyrics, and stories erupted from me spontaneously throughout my childhood. Few saw the light of day, eventually ending torn up in the trash. I don’t recall how else I could have kept them safe from the prying eyes of my older brother.

There was a door to the attic that could only be accessed through my bedroom and my bed was most often positioned directly in front of it – an easy way to bar entry to any wayward monsters intending to prowl in the dark of night. Did I hide my words for a time in there sliding them under the door? Did I stuff them in my mattress or underneath my dresser?

Regardless, I was born hungry to know myself, who lives in here, to make sense of my experience, delving into the unanswerable questions of existence – who am I, why am I here, what is it all for? Certainly I did my share of gazing up at the moon and stars contemplating the mysteries of the universe.

But what captivates me most – then and now – is watching with fascination the way one word threads into the next on the page, simple and easy as they flow off the tip of my pen or fly from my fingertips at the keyboard. An imprint of heart and soul. Yet no less marvelous is the alchemy being done through the creative act of writing itself – how stale beliefs and ideas are unraveled, reimagined, and woven anew further revealing my essential nature to myself.

The longer I’m alive the more rich I feel for the continued gift of navigating every byway of experience this life has to offer. With every new year and exploration, the more raw material I have to work with and the more enthralling the mysteries of this life become – within, and without.

As the writer Joan Didon famously said, “I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.”

A thousand times, YES.

Following my mom’s death in January 2024, there has been no shortage of notebook-filling with words of tenderness and gratitude, reconciliation and grief. Words that belong where they are, between private pages as I come to understand more fully who I am now.

Leaning into this lifelong practice of pouring my heart onto the page in order process, explore, and discover has grounded me in a world that inexplicably continues on without her.

As I continue on without her.

This weekend I celebrate 55, my second birthday since my mom’s body ceased to sustain life. Yet mine sustains life.

Inexplicably, I continue.

I remain an adventurer of life, curious of its highs and its lows and its messy in-betweens. I remain a student of the moon and the stars and each liminal space, curious of all it has to teach.

Most of all, I remain faithful to the page trusting the process to illuminate every unexplored corner, curious of its ability to orient me word-by-word to those same unanswerable questions — who am I, why am I here, and what is it all for?